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Working at Brown's Foundry in the 1950s was a tough job for tough men who would juggle daily with ladles full of white-hot molten metal. Len Hall, of Findern, who served a six-year apprenticeship with the firm, still recalls his fascination with the heat and light and the characters he met, as he describes here.

As a 15-year-old school-leaver, I was set on as an apprentice pattern-maker at Brown's Foundry, Derby. The works was situated on the old Nottingham Road just before you went under the railway bridge.

It was very large, stretching from the junction of Nottingham Road and Clarke Street the length of the street to the bottom, where the railway sidings stood. Along one side of the factory ran the railway siding that bought in coke and pig iron for the furnace.

The factory was divided in various sections. It had a structural and engineering assembly side, machine shop, fettling shop, light casting and heavy casting at one end of the foundry and, of course, the pattern shop.

When I started, there were five pattern-makers. Two were well into their 70s, serving their time when British engineering was at a high. They were real tradesmen. I was taught how to use and sharpen hand tools, which I have never forgotten.

The machines were driven off one large electric motor, through belts and shafting. The band saw, circular saw and planer were all sharpened by hand. The band saw was clamped in a vice, the teeth set by hand with a nail and hammer, then hand-filed all the way round. As an apprentice, this was one of my many tasks.

One advantage of the pattern shop being allied to a foundry was that you could follow a pattern through its various processes - moulding in the foundry, the casting being fettled and machined, and then assembled on the finished project.

In the foundry, the moulder would hand-ram the sand in the moulding box and cut his own runners and risers. These were experienced tradesmen, many of whom had worked long hours in the Second World War, making castings for the war effort.

In the late afternoon, these men would line up, five or six at a time, in front of the charged-up cupola. With a long, steel rod, the furnaceman would poke out the outlet hole. Then down the chute, lined with clay, would run the white-hot molten metal.

They carried ladles which they thrust into the stream of molten metal. Sparks and fragments would fly everywhere and the next man would have to be ready so the metal did not hit the floor.

These ladles must have weighed a good half a hundredweight. They would run along the concrete path, which was brushed clear every day, to their line of moulding boxes, cast them and then run back to the cupola for the next load.

The furnaceman, in the mean time, would have another one or two steel rods ready with a clay bung, shaped by hand, on the end ready to stop the flow of metal when the last in line had filled his ladle.

As a young lad, I would watch fascinated by the heat and light given off by the molten metal and these men running backwards and forwards, often cursing, many with scorch marks on their trousers and boots.

The foundry was established in 1868, known then, I believe, as Nelson Iron Works. It was situated in the Stockbrook Street area when it closed in the 1960s, just missing its centenary year.

In its lifetime, it made various castings for a variety of engineering projects. In the stores, there was some wonderful, carved ornamental pattern equipment, made and cast for Stormont, in Ireland, as well as depth-charge casings and sections of the Mulberry Harbour that were so vital to bring the war to an end.

In the heavy casting section, up to 10-ton castings could be made, using two overhead cranes and two large ladles, pouring molten metal together. There were also three or four men who did loam-moulding, which consisted of various shaped strickles and size sticks, made in the pattern shop.

Marked on the boards, the men worked the strickles off a two-inch diameter steel shaft, which was centred in a large steel plate. These were skilled men who built up with brickwork and loam sand, using the strickles to create the inner and outer shape of the mould.

These were large castings, five or six feet in diameter and six or eight feet high, with a metal thickness of 1.25 inches. Making them was a skill which has long gone in most foundries.

But even today, you will still find, in some Derby streets, manhole covers and drainage systems with the name of Brown's Foundry on them.

This was bread and butter work for the foundry.

I did six years' apprenticeship for my City and Guilds, before being called up for National Service. I returned for a year but the industry was already in decline and I moved on to pastures new.

For me, as a young apprentice, it was good grounding and an eye-opener to mix with these skilled men, all characters in their own right.

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County:  Derbyshire

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